missing title

you can see.

Presenting for Seattle City Light will be Craig Smith, Dennis McLaren, Chris Townsend, and Steve Grabowski, and Matt Love.

And when they come to the table, they can state their titles.

We also have, where's Eric?

Is Eric McConaughey here from Central Staff?

I saw him a minute ago.

He'll be back.

Okay, well, Eric's not here, but he will be here.

He works here at City Hall and is part of Central Staff.

And then from tribal leadership, and please correct me if I miss somebody, we have a mix here where some leadership will be giving public comment, but in our next panel after Seattle City Light, from the Sauk Suadal Indian Tribe, we will have Chairman Nino Maltos Jr., Councilmember Kevin Lennon, and also their legal counsel, Mr. Jack Fiander, who is a proud member of the Yakima Nation.

After that, we have Swinomish Indian Tribal Community.

We have Chairman Steve Edwards here.

And I understand we have Tino Veloz, the Wildlife Program Manager, who will also be at the table.

And from Upper Skagit Indian Tribe, we have Scott Schuyler.

Where's Scott?

There he is.

He's back there.

Okay.

Scott, who is the Policy Lead and, of course, tribal member, and Mr. David Hawkins, who is their legal counsel.

And they will be joining us after Seattle City Light goes through their PowerPoint presentation.

So with that, let's move on to public comment.

Mr. Clerk, you want to make some statements?

Wait, we'll open it up to hybrid and who's ever in chamber for public comment.

And now my clerk says, let me hand it over to him.

Tell me how many people we have in chambers and who we have online.

Currently we have eight in-person speakers signed up and there are 10 remote speakers.

Okay.

Let's start with our eight people and because it's under 30 everyone will have two minutes.

So let's start with our in-person folks first.

Go ahead, Paul, and start reading out the names.

Do you want me to read the public comment rules first?

What?

Yes.

Well, you get two minutes.

That's pretty much it.

Behave.

Be nice.

Be respectful.

Don't call us names.

Tell us what you think.

We want to hear you.

I think that pretty much wraps it up.

Pretty much what you learned in kindergarten.

It is city council practice during public comment to first recognize elected officials and then call on those signed up to speak in order signed up, starting with in person and then remote.

In-person officials that are first signed up are going to be Treasurer JJ Wilbur from Swinomish Indian Tribal Community Council and then following will be Councilmember Kevin Lennon from the Sauk Suadal Indian Tribe and then we'll move on to remote public commenters from tribal council members.

Wait, wait, hold on a minute.

Are you doing two first in chambers?

Let's do tribal leadership first, and then we'll work with the rest.

Yeah, Swinomish Senator J.J. Wilbur.

And you want to come on up?

And who's after him and who's the next one after that?

And then after him will be Councilmember Kevin Lennon.

And then who's after that?

And we'll move to the remote tribal leaders.

We're not going to go to remote yet.

Who else is in chambers who's a tribal leader?

All the in-person tribal leaders.

Okay, that's it.

Okay.

I'm sorry.

Go ahead.

No, you can go.

Chair Juarez, good morning.

You took away all the fun.

We don't get to call anybody names.

No, you don't.

I know.

Greetings.

I am Swimmers Councilmember J.J. Wilbur.

Cuts butt suit is my traditional name.

And I felt that It's in my heart to come up here and acknowledge some folks today.

I know this has been a hard process for a lot of folks to go through.

It wasn't easy, but I do want to thank our relatives from Sauk Suaddle and Upper Skagit first for what they've contributed to this conversation and finding common ground.

Skagit County, I'd like to thank the county for their contributions.

to the conversation.

Getting all of us to agree on certain terms and certain ideas isn't easy sometimes.

But for us to be able to stay in that conversation, even when the times get difficult and the conversation gets challenging, and for us to find common ground in the name of salmon, and most importantly, our home, the Skagit Watershed, because that's where it is home to us.

And for us tribes, it's been that way since time immemorial.

Skagitonians, they also take a lot of pride in the Skagit watershed and what they call home.

And this is a win for everybody, including the salmon.

Most importantly, the salmon.

Swinomish, we take pride in calling ourselves the people the salmon.

And much of our culture and who we are as a people revolves around salmon and salmon fishing.

and salmon for our community is very important.

Without salmon, our treaty rights will no longer exist and we take that very seriously.

So I'd like to thank Seattle City Light and the City of Seattle for their contributions also and staying in the conversation.

The Seattle City Light Team dealing with the three tribes and the county and others involved.

Sometimes it wasn't the easiest process to get through, but they stuck through it and came out on top for a win for everybody.

Thank the City of Seattle and its members as well.

Thank you, Councilmember.

That must be my time.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Unless you want to add more.

Is that it?

Oh, no.

I tried to fit as much as I could in two minutes.

Be respectful.

So thank you so much.

And I'll have an opportunity to say more down the road, I'm sure.

So thank you.

Thank you, sir.

Next is Councilmember Kevin Lennon from the Soxawaddle Indian Tribe.

He's going to be on the panel, not public comment.

Would you like to move to remote tribal leadership?

Yeah.

I'm going to go with the list that you have.

I know some of it changed, but go ahead.

Go with what your list is.

First on the remote tribal leadership will be Vice Chairman Brian Porter from Swinomish Indian Tribal Community.

After you'll hear a tone saying that you're unmuted, please push star six and it will allow you to speak.

This is who again?

Vice Chairman Brian Porter.

Porter from Swinomish, Swin.

Correct?

Is he on the line?

I don't see him.

Council Member Brian Porter, would you please push star six to speak?

Okay, there you are.

There we go, we got you now.

Go ahead.

Thank you, everybody.

Thank you, Chair Juarez and Council Members for this time.

I really appreciate the effort that we have improve our watershed and improve the Gadget River ecosystem.

I really appreciate the City Light team and their openness to work with the tribes and work with the agencies to get this process, this long process through.

The ultimate goal here is to get an agreement and to that a comprehensive settlement agreement approved here, and I think that's important to all of us.

Like it was said before, we are stewards of the Gadget River, and we take that very seriously.

We have cultural and cultural significance with the river.

We use salmon as a staple.

It's like it was said, we are the salmon people.

And I'm just trying to go off the top of my head here, but we'll use two minutes.

But I think it's important that we have a voice at the table.

and I think it's important that our leadership has a voice for our future generations.

And I really emphasize the importance of this comprehensive plan.

Sorry, thank you for your time.

Not ten minutes, ten seconds.

That'll be all.

Thank you, sir.

I should add tribal leadership.

You can go over two minutes.

You just take as long as you need.

So I apologize for that.

I should have said that on the outset.

Okay.

Is there anything else you want to add council member?

Okay.

That'll be all.

Okay.

Thank you, sir.

Um, go ahead, Paul.

Who's next?

Next on remote tribal leadership in this order will be Senator Barbara James, Senator Fred Caillou, Senator Oriel Bailey, Senator Alana Quintessa, and then Senator Greg Edwards.

First, Senator Barbara James, you'll hear- Before we begin, those are all from the Swinomish Nation.

Okay.

You'll hear a prompt asking you to unmute.

Please push star six.

Senator Barbara James.

Good afternoon.

I'm Barbara James.

My traditional name is Tala Tala.

And thank you for putting me, I'm able to speak today.

In regards to our tribe, our people, I am speaking on behalf of how I've been brought up by a grandmother who taught us and many of our elders who had taught us, the ones that we descend from, have taught us to take care of our lands and property the water, nature, all of it.

And we start at home by teaching this to our children and to continue to pursue all of this, to do this in all aspects of life.

The beauty of our surroundings and we start from the land and the water and where we gather from.

So as to protect all of that, how the river flows.

And we're grateful for this time to be able to carry it on for the generations beyond us.

the ones for the future for our grandchildren, our great-grandchildren and everyone.

So I'm here today to support that and to just be grateful for what we have as one of our elders in our community.

I thank you on behalf of our people.

Thank you on behalf of our elders who are here who had witnessed a lot of the work and the teachings that we have had throughout the generations.

And I appreciate each and every one and anything that's out there.

And we know that the things that we take care of will take care of also others because of the area that's around us.

That each one, we have to have the beautiful part of this in life and we're so grateful on behalf of all of our people and we certainly appreciate your time and being able to visit with us and talk to us.

Thank you so much for this opportunity.

Thank you, Barbara.

Next is Fred Caillou, Senator Fred Caillou.

It looks like you're not present.

If you want to try calling back in, we can come back to you.

So we'll move on to Senator Aurelia Bailey.

If you want to push star six.

Oh, there she is.

Go ahead, Senator.

Good afternoon.

My name is Aurelia Bailey.

My Indian name is Postania.

Very honored to have this opportunity to address the council.

You know, a hundred years is a long time, it seems, but not really.

Being able to come to this next phase of our lease agreement, 50 years, most of us won't be here in that timeframe.

I also serve not only as a senator for the Swinomish tribe, but I also serve as the culture director.

And my job is to preserve our cultural, traditional, and our language practices.

And much of that is rooted around the land, our territory, our home of our ancestors.

We grew up in fishing villages, all up and down the Skagit River, providing food, providing clothing, providing transportation, providing shelter.

That's the crux of who we are as Native people.

And I'm very honored that we've been able to make it this far in this agreement.

I look forward to future endeavors with the City Council, with all of our other neighboring relatives as was stated in the beginning.

You know, most importantly, as a tribal leader, I pray for our future generations to be able to uphold these cultural practices that were left to us by our grandparents and our great-grandparents.

That my great-grandchildren my great-great-grandchildren will be able to see a salmon, to be able to gather cedar bark, be able to build baskets, to understand not only the language but live by the language of our Native people.

And I really appreciate the opportunity to address you today, thanking you for giving us the opportunity to come together to honor and respect one another, but more importantly, to address the needs of both sides and how we come to that agreement that I know we're very close to the finish line on this, and I really hope and pray that we can continue to move forward in a good way.

In my grandfather's language, I say .

Thank you, my friends.

Thank you for coming together and having this high school and this good feeling.

Again, OCM.

Thank you, Senator Bailey.

Who's next, Paul?

Next, we have Senator Greg Edwards.

Senator Greg Edwards, if you want to try calling in again.

And then we can try Senator Fred Caillou again.

Okay.

It looks like neither are currently present, so that would be the end of tribal leadership.

Well, what about Senator Bruce James?

He's on my list.

He was not available.

Oh, okay.

And Senator Alan Quintaskett?

Also not, yeah.

Okay.

So with that, we've got tribal leadership, so you want to finish?

Okay.

move to in-person public comment.

Okay.

For in-person public comment, we'll have in this order, Will Hanna, Simon Thornton, Michael Thornton, Thomas O'Keefe, Elaine Meadows and Amy Traynor.

You'll have two minutes to speak and you'll hear a ding at 10 seconds remaining in your time.

Good afternoon, Chair Juarez, Council Members, Will Hone.

I represent Skagit County and its elected Board of Commissioners on Natural Resource Matters.

Our community has protected farming and fisheries across generations, largely foregoing the intensive development that has brought Seattle immense wealth.

I want to thank the Skagit tribes that are all here today, because without them, there wouldn't be five fish to catch in the Skagit River.

I think we all understand that.

The 1855 Treaty of Point Elliott guarantees Skagit tribes the right to an abundant fisheries resource to sustain culture and economy.

That promise has not been adequately kept.

We're eager to see this settlement completed so we can get to work together with the City of Seattle.

That means strategic estuary restoration on the Skagit Delta, which is under our jurisdiction and infrastructure management.

These are major, multi-faceted civil works projects that centrally involve our critical infrastructure and the prime farmland we've worked as a community to protect.

Skagit County's elected leadership has publicly committed to good faith estuary restoration on our land base.

Fish passage at Seattle's dams is also important to our entire community.

It's the center of this bargain.

It's an undertaking that will require City Lights consistent good faith and diligence.

Our communities should move forward together with this settlement But it's also the case that no contract's worth the paper it's printed on without good faith commitment to implementation.

The previous two City Light general managers did publicly commit to good faith fish passage implementation, but there's been some recent changes.

And the board would like to ask that Seattle's political leadership publicly commit to good faith fish passage implementation as well and join us.

We look forward to partnering with the City of Seattle on this settlement.

Thank you.

Thank you, sir.

Next we have Simon Thornton followed by Michael Thornton.

Hello council members and good afternoon.

My name is Simon Thornton representing Friends of Denny Blaine.

I'm here today asking the Parks and City Light Committee to add to your next agenda the Denny Blaine resolution that's been transmitted through the mayor's office to your committee and has been endorsed by the Seattle LGBTQ Commission.

This resolution asks the city to formally recognize Denny Blaine Park as a site of historic and cultural importance to Seattle's queer community and to encourage representation of the history at the park.

This proposal follows in the footsteps of the Washington State Department of Archaeology and Historic Preservation, who has already recognized the queer historic significance of the site, affirming that for decades it has served as an important public gathering space for the queer community.

Now we are asking you to give the committee the opportunity to have a public consideration of the proposal that has been supported by the mayor and LGBTQ commission and put it to a vote so that history of this park and of the community it has long served can be heard.

Thank you.

Next will be Michael Thornton, followed by Thomas O'Keefe.

Good afternoon.

My name is Michael Thornton.

I'd like to thank everybody here for the culturally relevant, historically important, and environmentally critical work they are doing.

I'm here to ask the Council to place on the schedule the resolution titled, Resolution Recognizing Denny Blaine as a Place of Historic Significance to Seattle's LGBTQ plus community.

and supporting efforts to preserve and interpret its cultural heritage.

This is a straightforward recognition measure.

It acknowledges Denny Plain's long role as an important gathering place for Seattle's LGBTQ plus community, including its significance as an affirming space for transgender and gender diverse residents.

It also supports collaborative efforts to document and interpret that history and encourages appropriate signage recognizing the park's historical importance.

This resolution should not be left sitting in committee.

The Washington State Department of Archaeology and Historic Preservation has already recognized any Plain Park for its significance within the LGBTQ plus history.

Seattle should move its own recognition measure forward and allow it to be considered openly.

I'm asking you to stop letting this resolution stall in Parks and City Light.

committee and put it on the schedule.

If there are views for or against it, those can be heard in public, but it should not be delayed in silence.

Please place this resolution on the schedule and let the council act on it.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next is Thomas O'Keefe followed by Elaine Meadows.

Good at...

Good afternoon.

My name is Thomas O'Keefe.

I'm the Director of Policy and Science for American Whitewater, also a rate payer here at the City of Seattle, and want to provide comment today on the Skagit Hydroelectric Settlement Agreement that we're a party to.

Hydropower projects are a tremendous source of energy for our community in the region.

but they come with tremendous impacts.

They alter sediment movement, water flow, water temperature, they fragment habitat, they block fish migration, they change recreational uses, and disrupt cultural character of rivers.

For river communities, they impact livelihoods, cultural practices, and have a long-term impact on ecosystem recovery.

Hydropower licensing under the Federal Power Act offers us an opportunity to reassess projects through modern science, updated environmental standards, and current community priorities.

These proceedings determine whether a project will operate for another 30 to 50 years and under what conditions.

In the case of the Skagit River, great wealth has been extracted from the river by this community, and as a member of this community, I think we need to come to terms with and reconcile the cost that that has resulted in for communities along the river.

I personally have been involved in dozens of regulatory proceedings in hydropower licensing over the past 30 years.

I can't personally remember one being as complex and as involved as this one.

Today we have a settlement that we support.

It does not address every issue that was raised, but it is a good agreement, and it does importantly provide a framework for continued collaboration and coordination in the Skagit River Basin.

This is not the end, but it is the beginning of the process to work towards implementation of this agreement.

And I urge you to support both the agreement, but also the resources for Seattle City Light to continue to engage and provide the staffing that it will take to do this.

So thank you.

Thank you, sir.

Next is Eileen Meadows, followed by Amy Treanor.

Good afternoon, council members.

My name is Ellie Meadows, and I'm representing Friends of Denny Blaine as secretary.

I speak to you today to echo the call made by our lead, Simon, for the Parks and City Light Committee to schedule a vote on the resolution acknowledging the unique and beautiful history of Denny Blaine as a cultural touchstone for the queer community.

As a queer person myself, for whom the park has become an irreplaceable part of my life, seeing the park recognized as a state level for its historic role was profoundly meaningful to me.

It's just as important that the city, which often is eager to show its support for diverse communities, really takes the initiative in acknowledging Denny Blaine and celebrates his special history.

I urge you to take action.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Last in-person public commenter is Amy Trainor.

Good afternoon, Council Chair Juarez and committee members.

My name is Amy Treanor, and I serve as the Director of Environmental Policy for the Swinomish Tribe.

For the past seven years, I've had the privilege to be on the negotiating team.

I just wanted to take a minute and echo the comments of our tribal leaders to thank the city, and especially to thank the City Light team.

They did stick it out through some very tough times.

maintained just above board, really honest, good faith negotiations, and I think we're all the better for it.

I think they really pushed for a commitment to the whole Skagit River, and in the end, they were fundamentally and very fairly committed to honoring and upholding the tribe's treaty rights.

So they've been good partners, and we're really excited to implement in the next steps.

And to their credit, they embraced the calls from the three treaty tribes and many other partners for an ecosystem approach.

Because they understand that the entire river, from up in the reservoirs, throughout the main stem and the floodplain, all the way to the estuary habitat, all of that to have an ecosystem approach is what we need to address to restore and recover our ESA-listed Chinook salmon and our other listed salmon, including steelhead and bull trout.

Remarkably, this agreement is just rooted and grounded in sound science.

Best available science will be a component of implementation from building fish passage, studying fish passage to make sure we do it the right way, making sure that we have adaptive management over 50 years to show how not only the restoration projects we look forward to doing, improve the river, but also that we can adapt to climate change, really important over this timeframe.

So I just want to say thank you for the City Light team.

Thank you for your consideration and respectfully urge your support.

Thanks.

Thank you.

The first remote speaker will be Jenna Frible followed by Laura Claus.

Please press star six when you hear the prompt that you've been unmuted.

Who's next, Paul?

Jenna Frible.

I don't see your...

Oh, there it is, Janet Frible.

Jenna?

Yeah, hi.

Yes, thank you for the opportunity.

My name is Jenna Frible.

I'm the Executive Director of the Skagit Drainage and Irrigation Consortium.

Our 12 member districts are Skagit local governments with a total of 38 democratically elected commissioners.

Together we represent over 60,000 acres of globally significant farmland operating dykes, levees, tide gates, and critical infrastructure for our community.

The flood control and fish passage elements of this settlement agreement will be beneficial to our community.

However, both the drainage consortium and the dyke partnership will not be signing the settlement due to concerns related to the habitat funds, as well as our impression that City Light leadership is not fully committed to good faith fish passage implementation, thus shifting the full burden of the settlement obligation onto Skagit farmland.

and our infrastructure.

Under this settlement, City Light is planning to spend a significant amount of ratepayer funds on major habitat projects that directly involve our infrastructure and our farmland.

Practically speaking, these habitat projects are not possible without our cooperation.

After years of being excluded from the confidential negotiations, we need transparency from the City of Seattle.

As a first order of business, City Light committee that will be dispersing the settlement habitat funds needs to hold open meetings, making the agendas and meeting minutes public to assure our community that City Light has nothing to hide.

It's also important that City Light affords Skagit tribal and local governments the space we need to sort out habitat projects involving our land basin infrastructure to ensure that this funding is aligned with and optimizes fisheries recovery's goal.

We stand by to do this work.

As noted, recent changes in City Light leadership have heightened our concerns and we request that the city political leadership publicly commit to good faith fish passage implementation.

Thank you for the opportunity to provide this comment.

Thank you, Jenna.

Next is Laura Klaus.

Please press star six.

Chair Juarez, council members and distinguished guests, thank you for the opportunity to speak I'm Laura Claus, Executive Director of Skagitonians to Preserve Farmland.

Along with Skagit County's Farmland Legacy Program, we work to conserve threatened farmland and prevent the paving over of our valley.

We are deeply concerned that the Skagit Hydroelectric Project Settlement Agreement was negotiated without Skagit County Dike and Drainage participation.

The infrastructure they maintain protects 60,000 acres of world-class farmland.

as you just heard.

The sizable habitat fund in this agreement that you'll hear about today is not tied to the Skagit Chinook recovery plan.

Huge dollars deployed on the estuary will likely lead to opportunistic rather than strategic conversion of farmland to habitat, increasing land prices and not moving the needle forward in a meaningful way towards salmon recovery.

This agreement also contains, critically, a path to fish passage at the dams.

Today, during Seattle City Lights presentation, we are looking to hear their leadership's commitment to implementing fish passage in good faith and including our local governments at the table, especially the Dyke and Drainage District.

It's time to turn over a new leaf, stop the secrecy, and to take the target off Skagit Farmland.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next is Robert Lundahl, followed by David Haynes.

Robert, please push star six.

Here's Robert.

Good afternoon, everyone.

My name is Robert Lundahl.

I'm the producer of a feature documentary film called Unconquering the Last Frontier, which we like to say is about the epic drama of the damming and undamming of the Elwha River.

I'm speaking today totally independently, not on behalf of any group and not with the anticipation of any financial or beneficial reward to myself, but only in the memory of two Lower Elwha tribal elders, Beatrice Charles and Adeline Smith, who helped with the film.

I have a very simple message today.

All of the dams need to come out.

The river needs to run its course with the downstream impacts mitigated.

Seattle prides itself on being a climate leader.

but the proposed $4 billion Skagit settlement is a 50-year commitment to a failing past.

We're told we need this power, but it's a failure of the imagination.

The Skagit dams are becoming stranded assets.

We're about to sink nearly a billion dollars into trap and hole fish passage, a speculative technology that has never successfully restored a salmon run of this scale.

If it fails, and if the salmon go extinct, the city remains legally liable, and these dams will be removed anyway.

That's billions of dollars of taxpayer money wasted.

Instead of patching up a hundred-year-old ecological disaster, Seattle should lead a massive solar build-out east of the Cascades.

By investing those billions into utility-scale solar and battery storage in eastern Washington, we can replace this gadget's generation with truly modern, reliable, and salmon-safe energy.

Thank you very much for your time.

It's a pleasure to be a part of this.

Final speaker is David Haynes.

David, please press star six.

Hi, thank you, David Haynes.

First, we need to free Denny Blaine from the culturally inappropriate deviant perverts who want to take their private parts and shove them into everybody else's face trying to enjoy a park that they are ruining.

And secondly, we need to adjust the settlement to verify that the tribes who already own casinos are not allowed to invest any of this money in their casinos.

Cause there's, looks like there's a detail that allows them to do that.

And I would like to know who's overseeing this money of $972 million to build a road to a, like a park, just to move salmon that are going to be shocked by the whole like experience.

And it's like, are the workers going to be paid more than a paycheck to paycheck wage?

Cause it sounds like they're going to be doing all the work.

Or is it going to be like the white man's version of capitalism where the boss doesn't do much?

Well, like the chief is the chief's going to be making the same amount as the worker doing all the work, or is the privilege going to get the six figure salary to oversee the trap and haul?

Cause that's a lot of money.

And it seems like some of the tribes members simply need some money to purge the poverty and the oppressions.

I'm all for saving the real salmon runs.

I wish you all would focus on the negative impacts of the cruise boats that get discounted port rates and then get to go dump a city amount of sewage in the ocean 12 miles off, choking off the path so that all the salmon have to go swim through that.

I know this is a little different, but it just seems like You're building a road for $972 million in paying people to ship salmon.

It's like, is it truly sustainable?

I mean, you know, you gotta save the farmlands for the people to eat.

But is this gonna be another greedy aspect where the tribes are gonna imbibe like a bribe and get paid?

Thank you.

Chair, there are no additional registered speakers.

Thank you, Mr. Haynes.

So are we done with in chambers and we're done with public comment?

So at this point, public comment will be closed.

And so we are going to go to our items of business.

So I'm going to have the clerk go ahead and read it into the record and then I'll take it from there.

Go ahead, Paul.

Agenda Item 1, Council Bill 121177, an ordinance relating to the Seattle City Light Department authorizing the mayor or her designee to execute a comprehensive settlement agreement, five off license agreements, and other related agreements for purposes of re-licensing the City of Seattle's Skagit River hydroelectric project before the Federal Energy Regulation Commission and ratifying and confirming certain prior acts.

Thank you.

So could I please have the presenters, I'm gonna invite them to come up to the table, the Seattle City Light presenters to join us at the table.

And then you can go ahead and have a seat.

Eric's here from Central Staff, Eric McConaughey, I'm glad you're here, Eric.

And then after we hear and go through their PowerPoint, we will have tribal leadership at the panel at the table to hear from them as well.

So go ahead and get settled.

I'm going to let you guys introduce yourself and then I'm going to make a few comments before we begin.

But I would like just for the viewing public and the folks in chambers to hear who you are.

And then I'll let you guys.

So with that, once you're ready, go ahead and start.

Good afternoon.

I'm Craig Smith, Interim General Manager and CEO of Seattle City Light.

Good afternoon.

I'm Matt Love with Cascadia Law Group, outside counsel for the city.

Good afternoon, my name is Chris Townsend, I'm the Director of Natural Resources and Hydro Licensing at Seattle City Light Good afternoon, I'm Dennis McLaren, Deputy General Manager at Seattle City Light Good afternoon, Steven Karbowski, Assistant City Attorney Hello, I'm Eric McConaughey, I'm on the Council of Central Staff

Thank you.

I'm glad you're all here.

I'm going to take a point of privilege here.

I normally don't do this, but I'm going to do it for this because I've been on and off or pretty much here for Seattle City Lights since 2016. So I'm going to kind of set the table not only for our friends and visitors, but for the viewing public.

I just want you all to know that my colleagues here, we've had an opportunity to review four major items, the February 2026 settlement agreement for the re-licensing of the Skagit River hydrologic project, FERC number 553, which is, I think, 25 pages.

We also got a memo from our central staff analyst, Eric McConaughey, who went through the background, the parties, the off-license agreements and the impact on our ratepayers.

And I want to thank you, Chris Townsend.

We got a memo from you, your summary and fiscal note dated December, I don't know if you got it updated, December 2025. And I want to thank you for your summary and fiscal note because you obviously gave us the summary, the background of the legislation, the direct and indirect impacts to the City of Seattle.

and also kind of outlined for us the $42 million in settlement payments and the early implementation actions costs.

And also, I know you're going to be discussing this.

I don't want to take the wind out of all your PowerPoint, but I just want to set the table for people who are watching and making sure people get it right.

We will be discussing that there will be a 5%, we believe there will be a 5% rate hike over a six-year period beginning in 2027 to 2032. and I also want to thank you for the way that you phrased the sensibilities of what we hope to gain from this, if indeed it does pass, that we preserve City Light's power portfolio, that we have active certainty in financial forecasting, and of course, I really want to thank you for going through the Race and Social Justice Initiative, the RSJI analysis, which is incredibly important.

I'm going to paraphrase in quote of some of what you shared with my colleagues and central staff.

that we are recognizing the traditional territory and homelands of many tribes, including Sauk Suadal, Swinomish, and Upper Skagit.

Quote, the settlement agreement includes significant commitments to restorative justice by addressing the unique interests of impacted tribes, including protection, mitigation, and enhancement measures related to fish, aquatics, botanicals, wildlife, nature, environmental, and cultural resources.

that stated recognition is a federal in a federal state city document any document quite frankly particularly in the settlement agreement is certainly required needed and critical and much appreciated so thank you for that we also had a chance to look at and go through your nine page powerpoint titled the skagit hydroelectric project ordinance and i want to just quickly give a little background and then I'm gonna close it out and I'm gonna hand it over to you, but I just want to share this for my colleagues as well.

I understand that we have like eight key points going back to 1924 and then in 1927 when the city acquired the license.

and then in 1977 when you started the renewal process and then in 1995 when the city got their 30-year license and then in 2018 when you started the process of this renewal and then I understand that our FERC license has expired.

It expired last year and now we're here now and hopefully we'll have a potential vote on next committee hearing on April 1st out of committee for this license.

And then we have, hopefully, an anticipated FERC license in hand in 2030. And when I say set the table, what I'm trying to do for those who aren't nerdy like me and us going through all the documents is that we are looking at a 50-year license.

We're looking at possibly a $4 billion price tag.

There are 16 parties involved, five federal agencies, two states, three tribes, county, and four environmental groups.

and that we have five off-license agreements totaling $350 million.

And I got that.

I think that's on page seven of your PowerPoint.

And without going into any more detail, because I want you to have an opportunity to talk about what all that means, just on a personal note from a former life representing tribes and doing things and working in FERC and these kind of agreements, There was a time in the 90s where we were negotiating and working with the Columbia River Intertribal Fish Commission, also known as CRICFIC, and the Northwest Indian Fish Commission in representing tribes.

And in our negotiations on the Columbia River, the Bonneville and all the big power companies kept referring to the Columbia River as the hydroelectric power source.

And I remember at the time, Doreen Maloney and Lorraine Luhmann saying, that's not what we call it.

And the Yakimas were saying, we call it the giver of life.

And at that point, as a young lawyer, I understood the difference in how people see water.

So fast forward, it's 2026. And I'm really proud of the agreement that you pulled together.

We're all very anxious to learn more about it in detail.

and when I made a kind of a flippant comment earlier, I just hope the press is paying attention and gets the headline right, that this isn't just an overnight thing, that there's a lot more here, there's a lot of moving pieces, but a big critical piece for the first time, and of course it took a little thing called US v. Washington, that the city and the state recognizes that tribes are co-managers, and we certainly don't need the United States government telling us that.

We knew that.

And so to see those words enshrined in documents and settlement documents outside of a courtroom, for me, and I think tribal leadership may agree, brings hope, because this is about the giver of life, not just a hydroelectric power source.

So with that, I'm gonna let you folks go ahead and take over with your PowerPoint.

Who's running your PowerPoint?

You are, Chris?

Yeah.

Okay, all right.

So with that, go ahead.

Okay, you gave us such a wonderful introduction and background, so I'm going to forego the opening comments that I was gonna provide in the interest of time.

You still can do it.

It's okay.

Well, first of all, thank you for the opportunity to join you today.

We're pleased to be here to brief you on the Skagit Hydroelectric Project Relicensing Comprehensive Settlement Agreement.

This agreement is the culmination of more than eight years of hard work and collaboration with our licensed partners.

The Skagit Hydroelectric Project is a cornerstone of City Light's clean energy portfolio, and this agreement ensures it will continue to be available for the next 50 years as a generation resource for City Light and the Western Region.

Today you'll hear from just a few of the many City Light staff and consultants who developed this comprehensive license package with the direct engagement of the tribes, state and federal regulatory agencies, and other key stakeholders included in the FERC relicensing process.

This historical agreement supports continued critical clean energy generation while strengthening environmental stewardship and long-term management of the Skagit watershed.

and I now will turn it over to Chris Townsend, Director of Natural Resources and Licensing with Seattle City Light.

Thank you, sir.

Chris.

Great.

Well, thank you for the opportunity to present today.

Before I get started, I'd like to thank the staff members that I have sitting in the room and more of them watching on the Seattle Channel.

I invited them to attend because they've been working eight long years on this process, and without them and Andrew Berlin's leadership, we could not have done this.

I also want to thank the tribal leadership and policy people and staff that are in this room and watching virtually and thank them for their patience over the past eight years.

It's taken a lot for us to get to an understanding about what the true impacts are to them and to understand what a meaningful resolution of those impacts are and we have certainly had some missteps and they have had the grace to get us to the point that we're at today asking the City Council for authorization to sign the comprehensive settlement agreement that we've all developed together.

So thank you to all the parties that got us to the table here today.

And again, I'd like to emphasize that the purpose of this legislation is to allow the general manager to sign the comprehensive settlement agreement.

And that, as Councilmember Juarez stated, is not the end of the road on this.

We still have until about 2030 until we expect a new FERC license.

So it's a very important milestone.

We can start implementing early actions It's by no means the end of the road and there's a lot of work that we have to do together with our partners to get us to the FERC license and hopefully a 50-year license.

The first slide does just show the specific parties that have been negotiating with us for the past eight years.

and Councilmember Juarez has already kind of enumerated them.

I'll add a few others that are not represented on this list or are probably here today.

This is an international project and we've been working closely with two bands of First Nations and others.

to address the cultural impacts to their resources in the upper watershed where Ross Lake crosses over into Canada, also engaging the Canadian government.

So extremely complex, lots of parties, and we look forward to moving forward together with them in implementation.

I was advised by a council member to talk as if I'm presenting to people who have never heard of this, so I'm gonna go over a slide that I know you're well aware of.

The Skagit Project is a system of three dams and three powerhouses located entirely within the North Cascades National Recreation Area.

It also extends about two miles into Canada, thereby making it a transboundary international project.

We also have uniquely two company towns, the town of Diablo at the base of Diablo Dam with a neighborhood called Hollywood, and then we have a town of New Halem, which we have agreed to rename Dwaylib in honor of the upper Skagit village that was located in the same place as the town of New Halem.

The generation capacity of the project is 840 megawatts, which is about 20% of Seattle's electricity, and it will remain a very important part of our ability to meet demand, especially as demand is increasing exponentially and our supply is not.

So we really have to maintain our existing generation capabilities, and this license will achieve that goal.

Here is a map of the, a generalized map of the area to show where the three tribes are for those who are not familiar with the Skagit River.

We have the Swinomish tribal community located near Mount Vernon, near LaConnor, in LaConnor.

and the Upper Skagit Tribe, their offices are located outside of Cedro-Wooley and then the Sauk-Suaddle Tribe is located near the town of Darrington.

They all have various rights and history in the basin and where the core of the parties that we worked with on the relicensing.

It was their interests that were the most important in driving the negotiations for this new license.

And we worked closely with them as well as the federal government who hold their treaty rights in trust.

So we collectively, as demonstrated by the signatures that we've already collected on the agreement, believe that this meets as many of the interests as possible and also the regulatory authorities and requirements of the federal agencies.

So this is a generalized timeline, luckily, and thankfully we're near the end.

I want to draw your attention to the FERC deadline to submit the settlement agreement of February 17th.

We've since updated FERC that we needed a little bit more time to get through the signature process, which we're doing now, and they're fine with that.

We anticipate, and I'll go through next steps in a minute, having the agreement signed in early April, which would be the effective date for the beginning of the implementation of the early actions.

It'll also be the date by which we submit the comprehensive settlement agreement to FERC and an updated final license application so they can begin their environmental review process.

After we submit the agreement in April, Again, we will begin implementing early actions.

Those early actions include the first things that we need to do on the implementation of the fish passage program.

So that shows definitely a good faith effort in getting moving on that so we can begin construction.

on the upstream facility, and I'll talk more about the fish passage program in a minute, but the upstream facility and beginning to achieve access to the downstream facility at Ross, as well as the science needed to ensure that we're implementing a fish passage program that will be successful and achieve the goals that we've set out to do.

And again, just to remind everyone, we are hoping that we'll have a license in hand by 2030. We'll operate under annual licenses until that point.

We have four priorities by which we operate the system now, the hydroelectric system now, and those four priorities are carried forward into the comprehensive settlement agreement that we're asking you to consider today.

The first priority is flood risk management.

That's important to the entire valley, and it's one of the first issues that we dealt with in close collaboration with Skagit County and the Drainage and Dyking District and the Army Corps of Engineers.

I'm excited about the new agreement that we've come up with.

It engages local partners in decision making on how to manage the flood pocket during the rainy season.

The picture, by the way, is a picture of Ross Reservoir drawn down, and that's essentially a visual of what our flood pocket looks like.

The flood pocket that we've managed this year in December, we had an atmospheric river come through and if that flood pocket was not there, the town of Mount Vernon and other communities would have been four additional feet underwater.

So it really is an important facility to the communities in the lower river and we're excited to move forward with them in implementing the new flood risk management measures.

The second priority is fish and we have three components of our are fish program and the comprehensive settlement agreement.

The first and flashiest and most expensive is the fish passage program that you've heard a lot about.

That program includes three feasibility criteria in order to implement.

One would be sufficient access to build the downstream collector at Ross.

Right now it's an isolated reservoir in the wilderness with the only road access being through Canada.

So we'll be working closely with the Park Service to do an access feasibility assessment that will include a road and I will request that it include a sky crane at the request of Council Member Strauss and any other viable method to make sure that we can build and operate that facility for the next 50 years.

the second criteria feasibility criteria would be that we can meet our goals and objectives so we are doing fish passage to assist in the recovery of endangered species especially in the face of climate change our water is cold because it's a glacial dominated system and the lower river is heating up so the thinking is that the upper reservoirs can provide cold water refugia for endangered species and the second and objective and one of the most important reasons is that this could increase tribal harvest opportunities.

So the second feasibility criteria is related to achieving those two goals.

And the third criteria is the cost of the entire system.

We have agreed to pay up to $979 million for a fish passage program and that will be directed by the fish managers, the co-managers, which include centrally the tribes and the state Department of Fish and Wildlife and the National Marine Fisheries Service.

they will be directing us on the species to pass and asking us to consider different configurations of fish passage that we can achieve within that cost limitation.

I think that also provides City of Seattle ratepayers with some certainty and risk management, which I think is a good when for the city and I think all the partners that we negotiated with understood that we needed some way to protect our ratepayers with the implementation of fish passage.

The second component of the fish program is a robust habitat program.

We've agreed to spend $200 million on habitat in the main stem and the estuary of the Skagit River.

This is consistent with our ecosystem approach, looking at where we can do the most good and get the most value out of our ratepayer dollars.

The estuary program we've written specific language in at the request of Skagit County will be guided by the Salmon Recovery Plan and other plans that the farming community and the fish community in Skagit County have developed to prioritize areas for restoration.

We've also committed with specific language at the request of Skagit County and the drainage and dyking districts to pledge to do, not opportunistic, but voluntary land acquisition.

So we will not condemn land in Skagit County.

We've said that in the agreement and also we don't have the ability to do that.

But the parties wanted us to confirm that and so we did include that language in the agreement.

The third element of the fish program are flow measures, and that has to do with the use of water.

So for example, ramping rates, how fast we turn the river up and down when we're producing power, we want to make sure we do that in a way that doesn't jeopardize the health of spawning beds and juvenile salmon.

our third priority in the agreement is recreation and again we're entirely within the recreation area the centerpiece of the recreation plan is the environmental education center which if you read the agreement carefully you'll notice that we are now calling the outdoor school learning center at the request of the current administration so that there is a slight change in the name in the agreement but it will always be the Environmental Learning Center to us and our partner North Cascades Institute who has been operating an award-winning program for the past 20 years serving fifth graders and other youth in Skagit and Whatcom County a disproportionate share of them disadvantaged youth so it's a really important program and we're proposing to continue supporting those programs and maintaining our education facilities in the recreation area.

The second part of the agreement is an off-license agreement with the National Park that's worth about $90 million and they have broad discretion on the application of that money.

We're hoping that they'll use that for the operations and maintenance of the facilities within the National Park and they'll also use it for law enforcement, improving transportation and other measures.

The fourth priority for us, it may be a surprise to you, is power generation.

But it is a fact that we look at these other factors before we look at how we use the remaining water to generate power for the citizens of Seattle.

And we've negotiated an agreement where we still have the flexibility and ability to provide power to the City of Seattle when they need it.

So that's the...

the core of what we've agreed to.

I'll talk about the off-license agreements with the tribes here as I'm talking about the cost.

So you've heard that this is about a $4 billion agreement, and that's a lot of money.

And we respect that, and we also acknowledge that it's for a 50-year period.

$1.8 billion of that $4 billion would go to maintaining the dams and the powerhouses and the transmission lines for 50 years.

So those are not part of the PM&Es or the mitigation measures negotiated as part of the license.

Again, $979 million for fish passage.

The $350 million is the off-license agreements with the tribes.

The tribal off-license agreements include upfront payments upon signature, of the Comprehensive Settlement Agreement, additional lump sum payments when the license is issued, and then some form of annual payment during the life of the license.

It also includes special measures, including a cultural center in the town of New Halem for the Upper Skagit Tribe, and a contribution to the construction of a new administration building for the Soxawaddle tribe on their reservation near Darrington.

And these are all things that we negotiated with each tribe as sovereign entities, and they were negotiated in confidence between just each tribe and city light.

And so I think that those are meaningfully addressed many of the issues and interests that the tribes brought to the table.

Hey Chris, I'm gonna stop you for just one second.

There's five off license agreements.

There are.

And of the five, there's two categories.

Right.

One is tribes and one is the federal government.

Right.

Okay, so it isn't all just tribal.

Right, the 350 million is for the three tribal off licenses.

Okay.

There's 90 million for the Park Service and I think it's 28 million for the Forest Service.

and the Forest Service is in the Wild and Scenic River area.

Okay, I just want to make that clear.

Okay, go ahead.

And you'll see my numbers don't add up to $4 billion.

No, they don't, but that's okay.

I just listed the biggest lump sum.

I figured it out.

I just wanted to clarify that.

And then there are all the other protection mitigation and enhancement measures and O&M costs.

So we do have detailed spreadsheets of those if you'd like me to walk through those to you later.

Yeah, later, if you're interested.

And again, just summarizing what Chair Juarez stated earlier, we anticipate that this will represent about a 0.5% or half a percent rate increase over the next six years between 2027 and 2032. The impacts to rates after that are difficult to estimate because much of that will be related to the implementation of the capital projects and that's really uncertain at this time how that will unroll and it will have different impacts on the rates as we move forward.

So just a summary of benefits again a 50-year license is incredibly important to the city especially in the face of increasing demand It restores and it has the opportunity to restore the entire Skagit River ecosystem The Skagit River by the way is the largest river in Puget Sound and it has 40% of all the Chinook left in Puget Sound so it's an incredibly important resource and and we think this comprehensive settlement agreement will make significant strides in recovering endangered salmon.

All species of salmon that occur in Puget Sound occur in the Skagit River too, so really important system.

We hope that it will respect tribal treaty fishing rights and their ability to harvest salmon and support their cultural, spiritual, and economic ways of life.

And it'll also importantly address impacts to the communities surrounding the hydroelectric project.

The City of Seattle's drawn value from the Skagit River system for 100 years and this negotiated agreement will return a great deal of benefit to the communities that have been most impacted.

It also has the ability to create a significant number of jobs through the implementation of the capital projects throughout the watershed.

So the next steps would be in April or May signing ceremony at City Hall.

We have to coordinate with the key tribal calendars and the mayor's calendar.

And we will then file the amended license application with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

and begin implementation of our early action items.

The FERC process will include a public review, a public comment period.

It may result in requests for additional information, and then they'll do a standard NEPA process and ESA consultation and the other standard environmental measures.

And again, we hope to have a license by 2030. and with that, I will open up the floor for questions.

Do any of my colleagues have any questions?

I'll start with you folks up here with me.

Councillor Rivera?

Yes.

Thank you, Chair.

I don't have a question.

I do want to acknowledge that I did get a briefing prior to today, so I feel like I got my questions answered then, but I really want to thank you, Chair, for all the context, the very important, and you're smiling, but it is really important context that you provided.

This is a very long, this was a very long process and I really appreciate the context in relation to our relationships with the tribal nations that are involved and the importance of that.

and so I'm always humbled because there's a lot I don't know and a lot that I'm learning and I appreciate learning that from you and from our tribal partners whom I have met with and from our staff.

Francesca, I'm looking at you over there.

I so appreciate the education.

Though I may not have all of the background and information, I do have the heart and willingness to learn it, and I know the importance of it that I do know.

So I'm really humbled, and I'm so glad that you all worked together to come up with an agreement that everyone could feel they could walk away from in a positive way.

That is really important to our city and most importantly to our tribal partners.

That is critical to our city, just period, full stop.

And so I really wanna thank you for your leadership because you've been working on this for quite some time.

You left, you came back, still working on it and I so appreciate that.

and thank you for everyone involved and thank you for our tribal partners for being here today and those who called in.

And thank you for your continual education that you have provided me in my time here.

So thank you so much.

Thank you, Councilman Rivera.

Is there anything?

You're good?

Go ahead, Councilman Saka.

Thank you, Chair.

I too just wanted to quickly acknowledge the hard work that went on to behind the scenes for many years.

This is a complex multi-year effort, multi-party effort.

And so I just want to start off by thanking our tribal partners for being here today and all the hard work and negotiations that you all have done in good faith to get this deal done and across the finish line and to this point where we're at right now.

Chair, you as well for your leadership.

Long before my time here, you were working on this huge, hugely impactful and strategic effort for the City of Seattle.

So I want to thank you as well.

And importantly, the Seattle City Light Team for negotiating so hard, so long day-to-day as someone who, before I became a lawmaker in city government, I was a transactional, intellectual property transactional attorney.

So I negotiated, you know, my fair share of complex licensing deals, but never one with, I don't even want to tally the number of parties involved in this.

So all this to say, Really do appreciate the work, effort, and compromise, set of compromises that went into this deal.

And appreciate also the multiple briefings that me and my office have received from the City Light team over the last couple years as well.

So here we are.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember.

You have the added pleasure of having three lawyers up here, so you're welcome.

No, it's great.

So with that, if there isn't any more questions, I would like to...

Well, thank you, guys.

I'll see you all again, I'm sure.

Hopefully we'll keep moving this forward.

I don't see anything from Councilmember Kettle, so I think we're good on there.

And I did learn something new.

Did not know the Skagit River was the largest river.

Are you sure about that?

I thought the Columbia was bigger.

Puget Sound.

And the most Chinook left in Puget Sound, so lots of orca food.

Thank you guys for your hard work.

I appreciate it.

And thank you for a short PowerPoint of nine pages with page numbers.

Yes.

Page numbers.

Trying to figure out how to stop sharing.

Matters matter.

Thank you so much.

All right.

So with that, we are going to do our second, which we are so honored to have, because we don't, I think this is only, I can count on the one hand how many times we've had tribal elected tribal leadership.

I would like to now invite to the table the tribal leaders from the Sauk-Suaddle Indian Tribe, the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community, and the Upper Skagit Indian Tribe.

I'm going to read what's in front of me, but then I'll let you folks introduce yourselves so I'll make sure I get it right.

From the Sauk Suadal Indian Tribe, we have the Chairman Nino Maltas Jr. and Councilmember Kevin Lennon.

And from the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community, we have Chairman Steve Edwards and Vice Chair Brian Porter.

That's why I could be wrong.

And from Upper Skagit, we got Scott Schuyler and the Policy Lead, Mr. David Hawkins.

So if I could have you folks, and Francesca, thank you for helping us with tribal leadership.

She is the Tribal Liaison from the Mayor's Office.

which is wonderful, and a tribal member.

So you guys take a seat wherever you deem fit.

And the way I have this lined up, and I think they did it by alphabetical order, is Socks, Swin, and Upper Skagit.

And you guys can, however you want to start, you tell me.

We'll just go from there, because I know, I hope we have, do we have enough seats for everybody?

Are we missing?

Are you good?

Okay.

Well, you're the lawyer, you can sit at the end.

You're okay.

All right, so we are gonna start with SOC, and I'll let you all do your...

You can introduce yourselves and your titles, and we'll just go from there.

Go ahead, Chair.

All right, I'll start.

Good afternoon.

My name is Nino Maltos II.

I'm the chairman of the SOC Swattle Tribe.

I'd like to thank you for allowing me this opportunity to speak.

This relicensing process has been a lot for everyone involved.

There were many different needs, wants, and factors that were taken into consideration during the relicensing negotiations.

Since the beginning, we strongly advocated to protect the salmon, not just for the Soxawattle tribe, but for everyone who utilizes, enjoys, and utilizes the Skagit River and its resources.

This is the same river my father fished at a young age, and the same river I also learned to fish along myself with many others.

It is an honor to advocate for something so important.

What we have on the table, subject to your approval, is a monumental agreement.

It solidifies the City of Seattle's dedication to giving back to the river while making amends for years of power generation.

This shows an understanding of mutual agreement between the tribes and other parties involved.

It took a lot to get to this point.

A lot of compromises and commitments were made to get us to where we are today.

This is by no means to be considered total mitigation to the impacts of the dams, but it is a start.

There was a considerable amount of time, effort, and major compromises forgone by the Soxwettle Tribe to get us to this point for the greater good of the relicensing agreement.

With that being said, we would like to see the agreement approved for the sake of all.

It is our duty to protect the river that provided for generations of fishermen in the state of Washington.

Tribal and non-tribal fishers will use this river from now to the end of time.

And this is your opportunity to help us continue that tradition.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

I forgot to introduce Mr. Jack Fyander, but I understand Council Member Lennon's going next.

Is that correct?

Oh, yeah.

Kevin Lennon, Sauk Sautal Tribal Council.

Thank you for having us here today.

And it's been a long time coming, and I'll yield my time to our council.

Thank you.

We have Jack Fyander.

Hey, Jack.

My name's Jack Fyander.

I'm from the other side of the mountains, but I've been with the Soxawaddle tribe.

I'm their general counsel.

off and on since 1983, to the point where they adopted me as a member of their tribe in 2014. Unfortunately, they made me number 001. I tried to get them to wait so I could be 007. And they're the tribe closest to the project.

I want to respond to the previous speaker telephonically and dissuade the understanding that this is some kind of just a benefit or giveaway to the tribes.

It's not.

We're not just agreeing to this for our benefit.

It's something that benefits the whole region.

just as City Light is not, and Seattle is not, if you approve this agreement just for the benefit of low power rates.

Salmon are the signature species of the Pacific Northwest.

I mean, for the state of Washington and the city of Seattle, the revenue generated to our economy from salmon, from the restaurants, from processing plants from recreational permits is billions of dollars to the economy.

So by approving this agreement, you're not just doing it to keep power rates low.

And we're not just doing it for a money grab.

Our rights are shared.

with all people in the region.

They're in common.

So if you approve this, and Seattle lives up to its promise to provide this fish passage access to more habitat so there are more salmon, that doesn't just benefit us.

There are non-tribal people that depend on salmon.

And because salmon are migratory, these species migrate clear up to Southeast Alaska.

You're benefiting everyone and our planet if you approve this.

And also, this agreement doesn't just benefit low power rates.

Some of the things Mr. Townsend discussed that we negotiated, the outdoor learning school we will have a space within that so that the tribal history and perspective will be presented within that learning center, not just propaganda about how good electricity is and how good dams are.

To us, that was a major benefit we negotiated for.

It's not monetary, it does benefit us because once that education is out there that Seattle is willing to provide through its cultural centers that go along with this agreement, it's going to reduce the backlash that we as tribal people always get because we're the most visible when we're on the river fishing.

So we absorb as much hostility for being there for exercising our rights, as does the city for having a dam.

And as far as addressing that speaker, I suppose it could be considered a large amount of money, but it's not.

Just consider it past due rent.

Those three dams have been there for almost 100 years.

and it has affected us, particularly at the Soxawattle tribe, the Upper Skagit tribe, the Swinomish tribal community, so it's just past due rent for using our territory.

And apologies if some of our speakers and me feel skeptical about whether Seattle City Light is actually gonna meet its commitment and its agreement to provide the fish passage past the dam so they can regenerate and increase.

That's only because we've been lied to for 150 years.

That's not your fault, but it's a workaround for you guys.

You're gonna face that, and we've tried to face that cooperatively through this negotiation project, and I hope you'll approve it.

It benefits not just City Light, it benefits not just the tribes, it benefits our whole region, and that's kind of the leadership we like.

Thank you.

Thank you, Jack.

The Swinomish tribe now.

Good afternoon, Chairwoman Juarez, Board members, my name is Steve Edwards and I'm the chairman of the Swinomish Tribe.

I would just like to say thank you.

Thank you for taking the time to hear us out.

Thank your staff.

Your staff, you have a great staff.

Thank the leadership.

Thank the leadership here.

Thank all the agencies for coming to the table.

This was a long process.

And, you know, it was...

There were good days and there were bad days.

But you know what?

That's part of negotiation.

But at the end of the day, we were able to sit at the table and have these conversations.

There were times when we weren't allowed to sit at the table.

But here we are, we're at the table.

Building relationship with each other.

That's important.

And I speak on behalf of my people, thanking you for this comprehensive plan.

what it means to my people.

I can't speak for other tribes.

I can only speak for my tribe.

The river system, the Skagit watershed is very important to us.

There's a history there.

Thousands of years.

Traditional food.

It's important to our people.

We feed our elders every Wednesday a salmon meal.

That's how important it is to us.

This is who we are.

This is our identity.

This is what we teach our people.

This is what we teach our kids.

I myself have been a fisherman for over 50 years and I've enjoyed every moment of it.

through thick and thin, criticized, but that's okay.

I'm gonna be the bigger, better person and find better ways to move forward, build better relationships.

Through this river system and this agreement, it's going to bring life.

Life back to this river.

More life.

Life to our people.

We think seven generations ahead.

And that's what we want to protect.

We want to set the table for seven generations.

That's who we are.

and by having this agreement in place, I know there's a future.

White people will always have salmon.

The table will always be set.

That's important to us.

And I can't thank Seattle City Light for having respect for our treaty rights respect for our people, respect for our leadership.

That's important.

And I just want to end by saying that I hope that you will consider supporting this, this agreement.

This relationship doesn't end just today.

This license is for 50 years.

We have to keep that relationship alive.

And I hope we can.

And I hope that you will just take this to heart and really take this agreement and trust what we put out on the table All of us.

We've all worked very hard, especially your staff.

So, thank you.

My hands go up to you.

My hands go up to every party that's here in the room.

And, you know, many blessings to everybody here.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you Chair Juarez and members of the committee for the opportunity today to speak on behalf of my community.

I also would like to express gratitude to the Duwamish, Squamish and Muckleshoot nations from which land I speak on today.

This has been a long road, and it's been a tough road at times, and I will echo the sentiment that we owe extreme gratitude for our tribal partners for standing together, because together we are incredibly strong and move the needle in a way that hasn't been done before.

As a natural resources manager, I apologize, Tino Villaluz, Hague Sayul is my traditional name, and as a natural resources manager, we're always looking for mitigation or things that don't save salmon but stop the degradation of salmon.

We're not looking for the silver bullet, we're looking to avoid the straw that breaks the camel's back and ends our existence in terms of our cultural identity.

And then this is the first time in my career and in my life where we have a positive outlook going forward.

and I think when you look at it, it's a big price tag.

There's a lot of glamorous numbers in there that aren't glamorous at all.

They are a fragment of the representation of the extraction that's happened over the last 100 years and represent a level of accountability and we appreciate that accountability because relationships are built at the speed of trust and that trust has a tremendous amount of fragility.

with that fractured trust, with 100 years of history, without ever being allowed to be at the table or to establish that relationship built on trust, this is a small price to pay, and we ask that you move forward in a positive way and support this.

It has been compromised by all.

It's just been...

I've had the blessing of being in the trenches for the last seven-plus years, we approach this as pragmatic realists, right?

We didn't look at this as an opportunity to try to push something that's really out of the realm of possibility, but as pragmatic realists and try to rebuild a future and build a future for our generations.

So in that, it's been a ton of just hard work by people and the trust I speak of earlier I think your staff at Seattle City Light has just been beyond amazing through some tough times.

I mean, I apologize for some of the emotion, but it's just been an incredibly difficult road, and the trust has been built, and the trust is what we have to carry over and hand down in terms of our inheritance to the future generations.

And the only way we can do that is with approval of this settlement.

You hear the saying, water is life, right?

But this is a managed system of water.

So with that, we don't say that saying, we live that saying.

Water is part of our core existence.

When you control the water, you control our life.

And as heavy as a burden as that is, think of it as a blessing and an opportunity to move forward and do the best with this water for the tribal communities on the river.

I'll stop there.

I have so much to say, but I want to be respectful of both your time and my colleagues here to my right.

So appreciate your time, appreciate your listening, and look forward to future celebrations that I believe we have in store.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Chair?

Honorable Chair and Committee.

My name is Scott Schuyler.

I'm an Upper Skagit tribal member and an elder of the tribe, and I fished Skagit River for my entire life.

My family comes from the Skagit River.

My great parents lived in a little cabin with no running water or electricity just downstream of the City Light Project area, and they lived out their lives there fishing and meeting with the rest of our family.

I'd like to talk a little bit about the history here.

In our lifetime, in my lifetime, I've seen the demise of the salmon on the Skagit.

I've seen the last spring Chinook fishery for wild fish in 1988, the last summer-fall wild Chinook fishery in 2007, I believe, the last chum fishery on the Skagit River in 2007. and again in 2026 we're not fishing steelhead.

This is a legacy that we hope to change through this agreement and brighten our future.

You know, back when the first dams were built or the dam was built in 1921 or 20, people ask us, where were you?

Why didn't you guys express your disapproval of having this dam built?

Well, we were impoverished at the time.

Our people were diminished.

We weren't even considered citizens at the time.

And so our people were in what we call survival mode.

They were just trying to feed themselves and live.

It was illegal for us to fish at the time by the state of Washington.

But we step ahead to 2026, so I'm here today to support this landmark agreement, the settlement agreement, which will provide first-time meaningful mitigation for the cultural natural resource impacts associated with the three hydroelectric dams while affording the City of Seattle with the certainty of a new federal operating license.

This agreement is the culmination of over seven years of intensive negotiations with the City of Seattle.

But from Upper Skagit's standpoint, this has been 100 years in the making to get to this point because these impacts were here.

We bore the burden of these impacts our people did from our perspective and we're looking forward to moving forward.

We walked into the license negotiations eyes wide open with very specific objectives that were important to us.

You know, first and foremost, we wanted to see the river return.

That's another thing that, you know, I've never seen in my lifetime, the river flowing in its natural banks.

We wanted to preserve and protect, bring back the salmon and all the creatures that are important to us through these mitigation measures.

and at that time it was time to address the degradation of Upper Skagit's unique culture and history by the project and return our namesake river, protect our salmon and other creatures, however small that are part of the landscape.

As you may know, this was the ancestral home of the Upper Skagit, sometimes referred to as the Valley of the Spirits.

Our ancestors lived and died in what we call today the Seattle City Light Project area.

Now, let's think about that for one minute.

You know, the desecration that occurred on these village sites, these sites that are important, contain the graves of our ancestors.

Most tribes sue when this type of degradation occurs.

Upper Skagit did not.

We stuck it out through this process in good faith and negotiated with the Seattle City Light team.

This project area was worth defending by our ancestors.

In fact, our ancestors defended the Seattle City Light project area from intrusion from the north and if you know the Skagit River at all, the Birdsview area, we defended the river from encroachment upriver from Birdsview upstream, so it was very important and sacred to us.

Again, it was called Valley of the Spirits.

This agreement finally addresses these specific issues, including the cultural appropriation of Upper Skagit's unique identity and affiliation with the project area.

It's hard to describe when It's hard to describe the emotions the upper schedule people will experience when the day finally arrives, when the river is finally returned to its banks, or when the very first salmon returns home after 100 years.

We do know that the ancestors who guided our actions throughout will be looking down and smiling upon us because of these actions.

Because of this agreement, there is much now to be thankful for.

for our children's and children will reap the benefit of a healthy river because of the parties found the wisdom to find compromise throughout the negotiations.

But today our hands again, we raise our hands and thanks again for not only allowing the return of our namesake river, allowing our brothers and sisters the salmon to return home, but with the interpretation members we have that are in place, we can finally call our home just that, our home.

Upper Skagit culture and history and the final restoration action will be the return of the Upper Skagit people to New Halem.

So we again thank the city for all these mitigative measures and look forward again for a brighter future for our people and our river.

And with that, I would like my counterpart to conclude for us.

Thank you, Chair.

Respectfully, Chairman, whereas there's absolutely nothing that I, as a non-tribal member, could add to what's been said here.

I've prepared remarks, but they're meaningless compared to the words that you've heard here, so I don't want to take away from what's already been spoken.

Thank you, and it's very seldom that I see the attorneys, even though I'm an attorney as well for a tribal government for Indian Country, so thank you for that.

I'm honored by the fact that you understand that they're words as elected leaders and those who live and die on a river.

Thank you for that.

I appreciate that.

I want to say a few things before we move on.

In going back to what you said, let's say Skyler Scott, because I knew your mom, the story you told about what happened in the 20s with the dams, you're right, back in the 20s, the state and the feds issued eminent domain, took our land, flooded it, and then we had to fight to get it back.

You can talk to Skakomish, the Skagit River tribes, you can talk to Lower Elwha, what happened at their dam, you can talk to Kalispell, I've been through two governors, four mayors, and now I think maybe four CEO GMs at Seattle City Light.

Sometimes the creator gives you the lesson over and over until you get it, and sometimes I just don't think they get it.

So I'm not trying to be negative, but I'm just trying to say that your words carry so much weight that this isn't just about that you fish for sport.

That's what Uncle Billy used to say.

You live and die on this river.

You get your names from this river.

This soil is yours.

And that's how the world works.

And Indian country, we believe power is land-based.

So I would rather have land back than a land acknowledgment.

doesn't do me any good for you to tell me that you're on stolen land.

I really don't care.

I want to know if you're going to give it back.

I also want to make sure that you uphold the treaties which is the supreme law of the land that are older than Washington statehood.

And I know you know this.

and I also want to apologize.

I should have done this.

It's been a while since I've been back home with my people.

I should have introduced myself.

My name is Natoyumististake, Holy Mountain Woman.

So I raise my hands to you and I apologize for not doing my right and honorable acknowledgement.

So with that, it is so important that we move forward on this, and I also want to thank my colleagues, and also Councilmember Kettle, who's still here too as well.

It may not look like it, but we really are paying attention.

And we understand the weight of this agreement, and trust me, we know about all the fights that have been going on between you know, the water, the land, and I understood what some of the callers are saying, and I've heard it.

As you know, I was one of the trial lawyers on U.S. v. Washington on the shellfish side.

So I remember deposing all those property owners and what they thought about us in treaties, and okay, kind of like you, you wanted to take the high road and say, okay, I get it, but in the meantime, we're gonna go to court, and we're going to, a treaty right doesn't mean anything unless there's fish there.

A right to access doesn't mean nothing.

A right to fish doesn't mean anything unless you have access.

And so for us to be having these discussions at Seattle City Hall underneath, you know, Chief Seattle, which by the way, that's a Plains Indian.

I just want to thank you for that.

I want you to know that you are more than just seen.

and you're more than just heard, but your voices, for me, is what carries these type of agreements, where I can say, if the tribes are good with this, they're incredibly sophisticated, yes they have lawyers, yes they have lobbyists, but they have something that's even greater your relationship of the land, of the soil, to me, is how I was taught.

And that's what this means to me.

If you can embody that here with Seattle City Light, and you know, again, I represented Skok when we sued Tacoma City Light, and I represented Kalispell when we sued Ponderay.

So I get it.

And so I'm guessing the city is happy that you didn't sue them.

Nobody wants that.

We don't like to end up in federal court because not everyone always gets what they want.

But I think you remember the famous words, and I think Marty's out there, he's going to correct me.

It was in US v. Washington or Washington Gillnetter's case, I can't remember, but it's basically, you know, you don't have a right, they weren't talking to us, to fish for the last salmon.

you know, and I don't know how many ways we can say that.

So with that, I just am very honored that you came.

And I'm gonna open it up to my colleagues and then I have a statement that I need to read that Council Member Strauss asked me to read to you folks after you were done speaking.

So I'm gonna hand it over to my two colleagues if they have anything they wanna add.

I mean, Chair, just to thank you all for being here, your words, are very, very meaningful to me.

I really appreciate, and it matters a lot that you came here to say you are in support of this.

And I will say also, it's meaningful that you came to say that, not just that we have our staff from City Light here saying that on your behalf, you actually came to say that and that is meaningful in a way I can't really articulate.

So I'll just say thank you so much for being here.

And I look forward to moving this forward with your approval and your blessing.

So thank you.

I'm humbled.

So I'm speechless as you can see, but thank you for being here and thank you for coming here to ask.

for our approval on this.

And I'll turn it over to my- Thank you, Council Member.

Back to Chair.

I'm going to have- Council Member Estaca has some words.

Thank you, Chair.

First, I want to start off by thanking again our tribal leaders and elders that have joined us today in person, in chambers, and virtually to share their perspectives on the call as well.

In particular, I want to acknowledge and express my appreciation to the Swinomish, the upper Skagit Indian tribe, and Sauk Suaddle, part of my anglicized...

You did good.

I have some work to do.

But to our Skagit tribes, partners and elders here, I really do appreciate you all being here, your thoughtful engagement over the course of seven-plus years to allow us as a region to get to this point today.

How does a $4 billion deal so seemingly far away on a map from the City of Seattle benefit tax ratepayers in Seattle?

It's more than just $4 billion in a 50-year deal.

What we're providing here, all of us, all parties, 13 plus, all of us are providing generations of impact, impacting culture, impacting our climate, impacting nature and our environment, helping to preserve history, so much more.

Is this deal the end all be all?

Is it something that we should slap high fives and celebrate and say we solved 100 years of tension?

No, there's clearly work to be done.

But it is a strong starting place, as I heard.

from which to continue to build upon.

So all this to say, thank you again for being here.

Really do love the format of this and the structure of this where we had our City Light partners and then we invited our sovereign tribal representatives here as well to share their perspective.

and I try to practice an attitude of gratitude daily in my life and this kind of format and structure and listening, being able to listen to you all is a good reminder for me personally why I do that.

So thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Saka.

At this point, I want to read the statement from Councilmember Strauss, who also chairs the Indigenous Advisory Council, but he couldn't be here today.

Councilmember Strauss says, I'm sorry for not being with you today, as I tend to my responsibility to represent the City of Seattle on the Sound Transit Board at a board retreat today in Tacoma.

Thank you to our tribal leaders.

Thank you for letting us be your guest here in Chambers and the Skagit River watershed.

The Skagit River is one of the healthiest rivers and has the highest salmon run in Puget Sound.

This is because of your millennia of stewardship, your conservation efforts of the last century, and the positions you have held in the last decade of negotiating this relicensing agreement.

Me, my family, and future generations are indebted to you and what you have accomplished for all of us.

The last license agreement conserved land in the Skagit River Basin, so much land that it equates the size of Ross Lake, which extends to Canada.

This agreement goes even further.

Your willingness to work with us in an off-license agreement and your commitment to hold us to account is what makes this moment incredibly special, is what makes this agreement historic.

We will live better lives and our future generations will be better off of the agreements which we are in the process of making today.

From the bottom of my heart, thank you.

While I am not able to join the mayor on her visit with you this week and next, I look forward to coming to you to meet and discuss where we go from here.

We have more work to do together.

Sincerely, Council Member Strauss.

All right.

With that, before we move to adjournment...

Chair, I think Councilmember Kettle's online.

Oh, I'm sorry.

I didn't see his hand.

Did he put his hand up?

Yep.

And I have something I'd like to add after, if that's okay.

Oh, sure.

I'm sorry.

Absolutely.

Go ahead, Councilmember.

He's my vice chair.

Where is he?

I don't see him on the screen.

Oh, I see.

There you are.

Sorry.

Oh, I see.

I flipped you away.

Sorry.

Go ahead, Vice Chair.

Okay, I did want to speak here.

I didn't want to speak in the earlier session as the one committee member without a JD, not being a lawyer.

But on this one, it was really important.

And first, I want to thank you, Chair, for this tribal panel.

I think this was really important.

vital actually, but I also want to especially thank the tribal government leadership and the representatives that we have today and all those that have been supporting them to include from the city, Ms. Merman and others.

I'm struck by the multiple references of water is life and Chair, I recognize your points about the land, but As a retired naval officer, I did want to speak about the water and, you know, in the Navy, you know, we're brought up to respect the water.

It's so important.

A key tagline for the Navy has been forged by the sea.

and for anybody who's been out at sea, particularly in difficult conditions, they know that they do get forged by the sea.

And of course, there's the, you know, the farewell of fair winds and following seas.

And so the water is vital to somebody with my background or similar, Coast Guard and the like.

And I think that we should speak to the water more.

And because as a city, we're doing this agreement which as noted is incredibly complex with so many participants organizations government non-governmental and all the pieces and then with the history as noted in the comments the the very powerful comments but this is just one part and you know as a city this is really important but as a city as a county as a state and most importantly as a nation we really need to be thinking about the water because as the Skagit River or the other rivers that go into the Puget Sound, into the Salish Sea, that's one thing, but the impacts on the water, the impacts on the ocean, the one ocean, are immense.

I think of the impacts of climate change, acidification, increasing levels, all these different pieces that we have in terms of what is happening to our water and what the impact will be on the tribes, on our native communities, and on all of us.

And I think while we should celebrate this, we should also look at this ecosystem as part of a larger ecosystem that's under stress and the impacts of which may decimate all the good work that we're looking to do here.

And so I like the focus of water.

I like the point that water is life and that there's more work to be done because this is just but one small step, if you think about it.

As hard as this has been, if you think in the context of the One Ocean and the impacts, like with climate change, decimate everything that we've been talking about, that we're trying to restore, that we're trying to revive.

And I think we really need to be advocating, again, at the city, at the county, at the state as a nation, in partnership with our tribal government partners, to look for those ways that we can assure that 100 years from now, that the water will be there for us for, as noted again, water is life.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Council Member Kettle.

Council Member Rivera.

Thank you, Chair.

I just, I wanted to acknowledge something that General Counsel Fiender, you said earlier about in response to comments that you heard.

I hope I'm going to, I'm just going to say this and I hope it doesn't come out wrong, but I don't, it is sad to me that you are put in a position that you have to justify what we're talking about here, and that somehow someone would see this as a money grab.

So I just want to acknowledge that is not how I see it, and I want to acknowledge that that you felt compelled to say that because others may see it that way.

And I think it's this constant having to explain to people and justify, you know, what is important to our tribal partners is difficult to witness sometimes and so I wanted to just acknowledge it because you said it and because that is not how I see it, that's not how we see it and I just think it's important to acknowledge that that's how you felt and that is important and I think that that is a I think a prevailing feeling.

And I will say, as a Latina woman, I understand that feeling of having to justify yourself to folks, and for me in different spaces for different reasons, but I think it's that constant justification that's really difficult that I've had to do in my own life.

I'm not trying to take something away from you.

Please know that when I say that, it's more that I want to acknowledge these statements that you made and thank you for making them.

And I, for one, feel really sad that you felt compelled like you had to.

And that goes to the work to be done.

There is a lot of work to be done.

So I wanted to acknowledge that.

And then I just want to make a comment about, I sit on the WIRA 8 Salmon Recovery Regional Committee.

As part of that, I've learned a lot about the importance of salmon and the importance of salmon to our region and, more importantly, to our tribal partners and what that really means.

It is not just a commodity.

It is something that is really meaningful.

I am so grateful for sitting on the regional committee because I didn't even realize when I was assigned to sit on the committee how much I would learn and the importance that the regional committee, you know, the importance of the regional committee to salmon recovery efforts for all of the cities that are involved in the region that are sit on this work, but more importantly, just learning about the importance of salmon to all of you, our tribal partners, and the meaning beyond just what sometimes people think of it.

I did want to acknowledge that it is an important committee and I know that some of our tribal partners sit on that committee and it is so important.

Anyway, wanted to note that as well.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Council Member Rivera.

Before we close on, I just want to say a few things, and then we'll go to adjournment, is that I made a joke last week in chambers, and a couple of my colleagues came up to me later and asked me, and I said, yeah, I actually grew up on the banks of the Puyallup and the Nisqually River at the Franks Landing Indian Community.

And Jack's looking at me because he knows this too.

Well, you all know this, is up until I was 13 or 14, I thought that Fish and Wildlife, that I've never seen them turn on a flashlight.

I just saw them hit us with them and throw us in the back of the car and take my mom and take Uncle Billy and, you know, Maisel Bridges and Al Bridges.

And I grew up watching that.

and so I understand what it means for when we learned from, and I'm going to mention some elders because this is what we do in Indian Country and I'm so glad to have my Native brothers and sisters in this space, in this people's house with me.

What I learned from Joe Dela Cruz and Uncle Billy Frank and Maisel Bridges and Gloria Bean and Alison Godforsen and Ramona Bennett and Suzette Mills, and I could go on and on, is I was blessed enough to grow up in a community, even though I'm an enrolled member of the Blackfeet Nation.

Yes, a Plains Indian saved your shellfish, you're welcome.

I understood what that meant.

My stepdad was Yakima, so my stepfather, well, we say step, we say dad.

So I grew up with an understanding a sensibility that you all expressed today that I hope the viewing public hears.

And that's why I'm glad what you said.

We often hear these comments, oh, tribes have casinos, it's a land grab.

And sometimes I just wish they would understand the sensibilities that America is ours.

This is our soil.

It's kind of ironic that they have the guy from Oklahoma who might be head of Department of Homeland Security, and he's an enrolled member of the Cherokee Nation.

That'll be interesting.

So with that being said, I apologize for going a little bit off script, but your words have inspired me here today, and I want to thank all of you for being here.

It really means a lot.

All right.

Okay, so with that, let me look down here at my script.

So we reached the end of today's agenda.

I'm guessing there's no more comments from my committee members.

Is there any other business to come before Council?

Not seeing any.

All right.

With that, there is no further business.

It is now 4 o'clock and we are adjourned.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you.